I have a set of after market headlights and the three prongs on the plug are marked "drive", "pass" and "ground". The ground is obvious, but is "drive" the low beams and "pass" the high beams?

The plug wires are also color coded, the one off the "drive" prong is red and the one off the "pass" prong is green. This happens to match up with the my F-100 wiring diagram (low beams were a red/blk wire and high beams were a green/blk wire) but maybe that is just a coincidence. Just want to make sure I have the hi/low beam wires right before I solder everything together.

Good find Frisco. But it raises a question in my mind. In the notion for tail light wiring it says the SOCKET must be grounded. So I'm wondering, why. To my knowledge tail lights usually have two wire leads, one is hot and the other goes to ground. What is the purpose of grounding the socket as well?

Good find Frisco. But it raises a question in my mind. In the notion for tail light wiring it says the SOCKET must be grounded. So I'm wondering, why. To my knowledge tail lights usually have two wire leads, one is hot and the other goes to ground. What is the purpose of grounding the socket as well?

Single element tail light bulbs have one contact at the bottom of the bulb and the other contact is made with the socket. The socket will have a single wire (spring loaded) coming from the bottom of the socket and the outer shell of the socket is the ground.

Double element tail light bulbs work the same way except there are two contacts at the bottom of the bulb and two wires at the bottom of the socket. The shell of the socket is still the ground.

The tail light bulbs and sockets that have two wires have one wire for the lighting circuit and one wire for the brake light/turn signal circuit.

CBoy, with all your design and fabrication skills, you have to be challenged in some fields. Electrical maybe?

Ha. I'm challenged in WAY more fields than electronics. I sort of take the "American Farmer" approach to car building...just keep welding on some angle iron until it holds together and looks sorta right.

Not to get too sentimental here but I had an interesting conversation with my daughter (now 34) not long ago about her athletic skills. She attended a small high school where sports was always a big deal. She participated but never excelled at any of them.

But in our recent discussion she said, "Back then I felt bad because I wasn't ever a star. But now i realize the importance of being mediocre. I'm still not great at any one sport, but to this day I can play them all. And I can play them well enough to have a good time, to enjoy myself, and not be an embarrassment to the other people on my team."

And I'm pretty much in the same boat with my car building. I've learned the value of being mediocre. My stuff will never reach any level of stardom or perfection. But I have a good time doing it and I don't embarrass myself all that much anymore. Except maybe when it comes to electrical.......

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